TATTIE TASTING
Airborne dust from Mount Hekla’s 1845 eruption is said to have given Orkney’s potatoes a fine flavour. Could rock dust improve soil quality and help crops today? We’ve tried it with imported granite dust, and with tatties, tomatoes and carrots, and now we’re focusing on tatties again and using dust from Orkney’s Cursiter Quarry. Growers in Orkney, the Black Isle and Moray have produced tatties in trial areas, with and without addition of quarry dust. Hospitality students in UHI Orkney’s training restaurant will serve them for you to taste-test.
Between sampling sessions, discussion will include Prof. Karen Johnson of Durham University on the effect of rock dust on soil, gardener Ed Bollom with tattie growing advice, and food writer Liz Ashworth on the sheer versatility of tatties in the kitchen. The team will be joined by Kevin Drever from Cursiter Quarry and tattie growers James Thorburn of Farewell Farms and Magnus Spence.
The rock dust trials are supported by the RSE and the Williamson Trust through the Healthy Planet, Healthy People award scheme, with further support from OIC’s CECLD Fund
“The writer remembers the dust so thick on the heather as to dim the bloom, and herdie boys trudging through the hills after their flocks raised ‘a stoor’. It has been said that the potatoes have never had such a fine flavour, even in a good season, since.”
– John Firth, recalling the dust from Mount Hekla in Reminiscences of an Orkney Parish (1920)
If you would like to try it yourself and grow tatties at home, Ed Bollom has prepared information about this year’s growing trials, on our new Sufficient Orkney Food website, which has been developed to encourage everyone to grow more.
“My favourite variety has to be Charlotte, but I always grow Maris Piper, Desiree and Cara. For this year’s trial I am growing Red Duke of York because it tends to be very reliable in my soil and it seems that red skinned varieties are less susceptible to slug attack. I’m also trying out Caledonia Pearl for the first time this year.
I can’t wait to see the results of this latest round of trials. Research into this field of horticulture is still in its infancy but there has been huge progress in our understanding of soil science in recent years. Far from being a sterile medium in which our plants are anchored, the soil is teaming with life, a vast biome full of organisms that are vitally important to our plants and our own health. I suspect that incorporating rock dust not only adds vital trace elements to the soil, but the mineral content also helps to feed the fungal mycelium that then performs an essential role in feeding the roots of plants.”
